


When first we practice

by Naraht



Series: In that dark womb [3]
Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: 1940s, Discussion of Abortion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 19:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3541172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the day of her discharge from the nursing home in Roehampton, Hilary received a discreet note from David asking her to tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When first we practice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/gifts).



On the day of her discharge from the nursing home in Roehampton, Hilary received a discreet note from David asking her to tea. 

For years she had lived happily enough without seeing him; she could leave for Gloucestershire and never see him again. Her one obligation to him she had discharged with a posted cheque, which he could deposit or rip up as he chose. Any other imagined obligation could only be a matter of sentiment, which David refused to acknowledge. Therefore it did not exist.

And yet gazing at the note she felt a certain lingering curiosity which correspondence would not assuage. Alongside this came the nagging thought that David had hardly seen her at her best, previously, and that she might yet make up for it. 

Naturally she would not have accepted the invitation if she had not been passing through London already, but as she would be on her way to Paddington, there seemed no harm in doing so. Half an hour at a Lyons Corner House, thought Hilary, hardly committed one to anything.

She was not wrong. David's arrival at the café, a few minutes after Hilary's own, was satisfyingly undramatic. Despite the week-end crowds he seemed to notice her instantly, and without fuss or showy greeting came over to take a seat at the table she had claimed. They might, thought Hilary, have been husband and wife, making their rendezvous after an afternoon of shopping.

"I thought it was better to take a table straightaway," said Hilary.

"Quite right," said David, picking up the menu. "Let's see..."

It was David who brought up the topic of London plays - neutral, or so one would imagine. Hilary fought to keep it so, telling herself there was no way he could have known; she just about succeeded. She had begun attending the theatre more regularly for the sake of having something of interest to write in her letters to Julian, and had continued, even through the Blitz, on her own account. So, it transpired, had David, who had a healthy layman's interest in drama without any desire to put forward his own ideas for a production at the expense of the one which he had seen.

Thus occupied they talked satisfyingly for a good half an hour. Conversation with David had always combined a maximum of intellectual stimulation with a minimum of emotional demand. Their mutual crisis in the past, they set it aside by unspoken agreement. Instead they met as two sensible, rational individuals, brought together by a shared history but unwilling to be ruled by it, taking pleasure in passing the time with a discussion of common interests. So thought Hilary, not without a note of self-congratulation. Henceforth these memories would become as sterile as the others; this was one of David's skills. She was right to have come.

As their theatrical discussion drew to a close, Hilary realised that she had neglected her tea and scone, which in any case she suspected of having been lightly adulterated with sawdust.

"Had you ever thought of buying a London practice?" asked David. "Easier to get to the theatre if nothing else. And you never struck me as a countrywoman somehow."

"All the time," admitted Hilary. She prodded the scone with the tines of her fork; it did not give an inch.

"And?"

"And it's not as if I couldn't afford it." She said this rather defensively, though she suspected that, despite his considerable income, she had a good bit more in the way of savings than David. "But there's the house to look after, among other things."

David's heavy brows knit together with a puzzlement that she had rarely seen in him.

"It's not simply a matter of selling up," Hilary explained. "Julian wouldn't hear of it. It's the family estate."

She realised it was the first time she had mentioned her husband during the course of the tea.

"Here I thought you were just a country G.P."

"I am," said Hilary. "But not just. Hadn't you looked us up in Burke's?"

"It never occurred to me," David replied, amused. "I'm not a tuft-hunter."

Hilary hurriedly clarified. "Not the _Peerage_. Just the _Landed Gentry_." 

"And how do you enjoy being the lady of the manor?"

There were any number of answers that she could give - and had given - to this question. But her habit with David had always been one of rigorous honesty, however painful or unwelcome the truth might have been, so she did not sift the options thinking which one might suit best. She said the first thing that came to mind.

"I hate it."

David laughed. It had just a bit too much in it of self-congratulation. "I could have told you that."

"So could I," said Hilary. "But it doesn't matter. I knew it when I married him. It's only that his mother went and left us the place sooner than expected."

"Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life."

Hilary studied him over steepled hands. He had not ever, in so many words, told her how to live her life. He had only made it perfectly clear, in an abstract sense, what he considered to be sensible and rational ways of living, while intimating with a brisk efficiency that he would have expected no less of her. It was her own resentment at those assumptions that had caused her to make a choice he would never have expected, and abandon hospital life for Gloucestershire.

"Thank you." She studied the scone again and felt her spirit fail her. "I can't possibly eat any more of this. Shall we go?"

He did not walk her to the Tube station, but merely took his leave of her on the pavement outside. They did not discuss meeting again. Nonetheless, a week later, when Hilary received another succinct, unceremonious note suggesting that they rendezvous on a certain day and time in Greenwich Park, she was not at all surprised.

 _Yes,_ she wrote quickly, without allowing herself time to think, and signed it: _HM._

It was only after she posted the reply that she realised she had written the initials of her maiden name.

***

 _This is a poor idea,_ she thought, walking upwards through the park towards Greenwich Observatory. It was a warm day, and a steep hill. She was grateful for the leafy boughs overhead blocking out most of the sun; she was grateful also for the exertion, which allowed her to believe that the thump of her heart and the sweat prickling her skin was due solely to her unrelenting pace.

A poor idea, perhaps, but not a disastrous one, for Hilary trusted in her own self-control. It might commonly be said that a married woman and a married man could never be friends - for such she considered David now, forgetting that only a fortnight earlier she had thought she hated him. But that was clearly untrue. They could govern their own passions; they could behave rationally. There was no need to hedge themselves about with the caution that others might require.

_In any case, it's impossible. I haven't entirely recovered yet._

The ridiculousness of owing her marital fidelity to an unfinished recovery from a D&C struck her immediately, and on several levels. To begin with she did not intend to sleep with David, and if she had done - if the gentleman in question had been Julian, for instance - she would simply have pointed out to him that there were other expedients which would impart equal satisfaction without imperiling a still-fragile cervix.

But no. It _was_ impossible; David would know it too. The simplicity of this was satisfying, meaning that one need not reflect further. Something about the fact pleased her and she was smiling to herself as she reached the crest of the hill. 

David was there waiting for her, carrying a small hamper from Fortnum and Mason. "You look years younger today," he said. "Have you done your hair differently?"

"No," Hilary replied. She had set off in enough of a rush that she had scarcely been conscious of doing it at all. "But I'm not suffering from the aftereffects of blood loss now. I think you'll find that makes a good bit of difference."

Unaccountably she found that she was still smiling. If it had been anyone else she might have hit him.

David continued to study her. "No, that's not it. You look as if someone just told you a terribly good joke."

"Well, I did hear a good one last week, shall I tell it you?"

This she did while they were unpacking and arranging the picnic things. She had acquired it while treating a young farmer whose leg had been pinned under an overturned tractor. In the end they had managed to lever it off him, meaning that she had not been required to amputate on the spot, which she had feared might be the only option. Someone had run for an ambulance; it had arrived promptly, and he had been loaded into it with a serious tib-fib fracture but every chance of recovery. The feeling of relief from the gathered men had been so strong that they had begun telling jokes before the ambulance doors were closed, forgetting entirely that a lady was present. Indeed Hilary had not noticed, so busy had she been supervising the patient's move to a stretcher and looking out for the signs of shock; it was not until she was driving home from the cottage hospital several hours later that she realised she could remember every one of them.

Swapping jokes had always been something that they had enjoyed. David laughed gratifyingly at this one, and at the two with which she followed it. All three were frankly obscene. If she had not shared them with David, she would most likely have taken them to the grave, for there was no one else who would have appreciated them. Certainly not Julian.

"My patients never tell me things like that," said David once he had recovered himself.

"They never would have, if they'd known that I was listening."

She related the rest of the tale. David listened, frowning.

"Have you ever actually amputated... one wants to say 'in the field'..."

"Yes, once, a few years ago. And it was in a field, as it happens. Similar case. It seemed appallingly barbaric to me but I reminded myself that it must have been far worse on the Western Front. After all one hadn't to worry about the artillery. And the patient did survive."

The aftermath had been a raging infection, at which she had thrown most of her new and meagre stocks of penicillin in an effort to prove that she had made the right choice. It had pulled her through - just. The nearness of the recovery she did not mention.

She bit her lip. The story had reminded her for a moment of her elder brother, for whom there had been no penicillin.

"You weren't in the Forces, were you?" she asked, grasping at anything to exorcise the ghost, even though she could perfectly well guess what the answer would be.

"No," said David shortly. "I was right here. I couldn't be spared."

It was obviously a sore point. He had done well out of his civilian status, and one supposed that not all of his former colleagues would have appreciated it. One also somehow doubted that he would have been kept out of the Forces so easily if he had felt the desire to serve.

"Ever consider joining up anyway?" she continued, surrendering to the urge to test his sensitivity to pain.

"Of course I did. Didn't you? I'd have thought you'd have jumped at the chance to become Major Hilary Mansell, RAMC."

"Fleming," replied Hilary automatically. "Yes, of course, didn't we all, but there would have been no point in it. I'm a woman, they wouldn't have sent me to the front; I would only have been on some dreary base in Scotland treating WAACs with ingrown toenails. Besides, you forget - I'm not a specialist."

"I do forget." He spoke in a low, neutral voice which was impossible to read. "Still, I don't suppose one can begrudge you your country life."

This was David's specialty, a sort of tolerance which was not really tolerance at all. It smarted but she supposed she had brought it upon herself. She had never asked, or expected, quarter from him. And he would have thought less of her if she had shown any bitterness or balked pride.

"Shall we have our picnic?" she asked, with a gaiety which was not altogether difficult to feign. "I'm keen to see what you managed to find."

The contents of the hamper had not been supplied by Fortnum and Mason, but it was nonetheless a respectable spread in those straitened days. Hilary wondered whether he had raided the larder at home - or whether his relaxed attitude towards the black market in medicine extended to other black market goods. She did not like to think of herself as taking scotch eggs out of the mouths of the needy, but she did not think about it long. Sitting on the sturdy picnic blanket - blessing the wartime changes that had allowed her to wear trousers almost respectably - she ate, and smoked, and enjoyed the view, with David all the while a companionably silent presence at her side. In six years of marriage, Julian in her presence had never managed to remain quiet for more than ten minutes at a stretch.

"It still seems strange not to see the barrage balloons," she observed, upon finishing a second cigarette. "I wonder how long it will be before one stops finding oneself always listening for aeroplane engines. Even in Gloucestershire..."

But there was no point in talking. She trailed off again, conscious of the happy superfluity of words. Instead she lay back on the picnic blanket and allowed the sun to beat deliciously down upon her. Feeling the dampness of sweat collected in the hollow of her neck, she unbuttoned the second button of her blouse. Soon enough she could feel her pale, underexposed skin beginning to sting. She would pay for it eventually. But that would be in the future, not now.

After taking off his jacket and unbuttoning his waistcoat, David laid down beside her. He loosened and took off his tie, and put it into his pocket. Then he turned on his side, towards her.

"It's not an unhappy marriage, you know," he said quietly, as if he were carrying on a conversation that had begun some time before. "It strikes me that society would be far better off if we simply acknowledged that even the happiest of marriages can't always provide everything one needs at home. You don't expect your wife to be your lawyer and your priest as well as the mother of your children, after all. Or to diagnose you and take you to theatre."

This spontaneous observation had left Hilary so stunned that coherent response seemed entirely beyond her. Until the last sentence - when she laughed.

"Present company excepted, of course," added David graciously.

His views were scarcely a surprise. In their Clyde Summers days they had agreed - or David had stated and Hilary had allowed it to pass on the nod - that jealousy was an antiquated notion and a relationship whose bond could not survive other liaisons hardly deserved continuation. Whether he had taken advantage of this implicit permission, she did not know, and at the time had felt no desire to know; certainly she had never thought of doing so herself.

Heat flooded her face, less anger than an odd compound of shame and protectiveness at the thought of her younger self. She lit another cigarette in order to do have something to do.

"I've said no already," she replied finally - and, she felt, unsatisfactorily.

"It was merely an observation. I wondered whether you felt the same."

"It's a bit difficult to have all one needs at home," said Hilary, clenching her fists desperately and wondering whether she ought not to simply walk away, "when one's husband is posted to India."

David inclined his head as if acknowledging the justice of this point. 

"And yet that's circumstance rather than principle," he added, just at the moment when she had thought he would let it slide.

"Oh, David, hasn't anyone told you that you're an unmitigated ass?"

"My wife," said David. "Repeatedly."

After all of this one could not help but laugh. So she did, shaking her head at the absurdity of the world and staring up into the clear blue sky.

"Why you should need a second opinion from me," she said finally, "I've no idea."

"Yours is an opinion worth having. I've always thought so." He paused. "Which reminds me, there was something I've been meaning to ask. It's about my practice. I've been looking for an assistant for some time now..."

Hilary misunderstood this overture with a stubbornness borne from sheer terror. "I'm afraid there's no one I could recommend. You've no idea how far from things we are in Gloucestershire - I'm the closest thing to a general surgeon the Cottage Hospital has ever had - and it's not as if I've had the time to go to conferences and meet..."

"You, Hilary." David spoke with a crisp urgency. "Of course."

She sat up with a sudden jerk. "My dear," she said, "no, you can't be serious, you couldn't possibly..."

David remained where he was on the blanket. He squinted up at her, shielding his gaze from the sun with one hand. It brought the lines around his eyes into relief. "Perfectly serious. And there's no reason you should turn me down."

"There's every reason."

"I stand corrected. You might very well choose to throw your career away out of pique and a desire to prove me wrong. You've done it before."

There were other objections. Her age, her lack of experience or prestige, her responsibilities in Lynchwick, the fact that people would talk, which of course they would... all of these, and more, she listed rapidly and with a sinking sense that none of them made the slightest impression upon David.

"Think it through," he advised. "Don't say anything you'll regret. I'm perfectly happy to wait for an answer."

"It won't make any difference," Hilary protested.

"In fact, here's a thought. Think about it for a week and then come to dinner with us. We can talk it over properly then."

She assumed that he meant his partners at the practice. Dinner at the Savoy, no doubt. It would be a job interview in all but name. They would think he had gone mad.

"Us?" she said, weakly temporising.

"Jenny and I, of course. In Guildford. How does Saturday strike you?"

***

Argyll Lodge was exactly as one would have pictured it: a substantial, double-bay-fronted redbrick Victorian villa, set well back from a quiet road. It was, in fact, not unlike her own childhood home in Shropshire, which her father had purchased from the builder upon his marriage in 1885. The name was inscribed on the stone gatepost, so there was no doubt that she had come to the right place.

Hilary pulled her car into the gravel drive and turned off the engine. In order to steady her nerves she lit a quick cigarette - which she put out, half-smoked, upon noticing that someone was twitching aside the lace curtains of a bay window in order to look out at her. The sun was shining into her eyes; she could not see more than that.

Discarding the cigarette in the gravel, Hilary straightened her dress, went up the front walk, and pulled the brass doorbell.

The door was quickly opened by a small boy in short trousers who had David's dark hair and, unmistakably, his nose. It must have been him watching at the window, thought Hilary.

"How do you do," she said. "I'm Hilary Fleming."

"My name is Ossie. It's a rather unusual name. Short for Ossian."

"Yes, it's a name I know. And a very nice one too." 

Surely, thought Hilary, David could never have forgotten that second assistantship, not with the living reminder in front of him every day. One supposed that he, for reasons that he would not consciously have acknowledged as political, had asked Ossian Bradford to stand as godfather. She just stopped herself from asking the boy whether he knew he had been named after his father's old chief.

"And how old are you, Ossie?"

"I'm seven and a half. I shall be going to prep school in the autumn. It's called Granton; a _rather good_ school. Have you heard of it?"

Hilary allowed that she had not. Her years in general practice had forced her to develop a certain unwilling facility in making conversation with children, but there was no need for that skill here. He gladly, and lengthily, told her everything she could wish to know about Granton, with an air as if he were doing her a service. It had never occurred to her to wonder what David had been like as a boy; now she knew.

Just as they had got onto the subject of the cricket pitch, David came through into the foyer. He covered the distance to the door in a few long strides and put his hand on his son's shoulder.

He nodded to her. "Hilary. I see you've met Ossie."

"Yes," she echoed wryly. "I've met Ossie."

She raised her eyebrows at him, in hopes of eliciting a reaction, but none was forthcoming.

"It's the maid's half day. And on a Saturday as well. Apparently her mother is ill. I'm thinking of authoring a paper on the disproportionate morbidity and mortality of the relations of domestic staff in Surrey." 

Hilary smiled, because it was expected that she would smile.

"Thankfully we have Ossie to answer the door," David continued. "But he was just going upstairs to get ready for bed, weren't you, poppet?"

Clearly David's son had expected more of the evening, but he complied with relative good grace. Hilary, still smarting from the use of _poppet_ , which she had previously only heard David apply to herself, barely remembered to wave goodnight to him when he reached the top of the stairs.

After all, thought Hilary, he could hardly be blamed for reminding her of something that had happened before he was born.

It was the effort involved in this generous reflection that caused her to miss the arrival of Ossie's mother.

"Hilary, this is Jenny," said David, ushering his wife forward into the foyer with a well-bred pleasantry that Hilary instinctively resented. "Jenny, this is Hilary - Fleming."

Upon seeing the woman, Hilary finally remembered her from the Clyde Summers: a small, plump, pretty orthopaedic nurse, whom Hilary had considered more than averagely competent, but not worth of any particular attention. David had obviously felt differently.

She was blond, impeccably made up, and still pretty, though perhaps no longer what the world considered young - five years her own junior, Hilary guessed, which meant that forty was not so far off. Her figure, though well-contained and becomingly presented in a floral sprigged frock, was unquestionably that of a mother of four - and, if Hilary's trained eye was any guide, there was a fifth, as yet un-announced, on the way.

 _Thank God,_ she thought. _Thank God, not me as well. I couldn't have._

All she said was, "How do you do."

"How do you do," said Jenny. There was the faintest trace of a provincial accent, well reined-in, too slight to identify. "It's such a pleasure to see someone from the Clyde Summers after all this time. How lucky that David happened to cross paths with you at that conference."

Hilary quickly acknowledged that it had been a lucky chance - David refused to meet her eyes - and was relieved when he suggested that they move through to dinner.

It was impossible to dislike Jenny. Hilary told herself this, fixedly, throughout most of the meal, since she feared that without regular reminder she would default to doing so as a matter of course. But David's wife was engaging, amusing, and moderately intelligent. By common consent they turned to a discussion of hospital life - mostly a matter of reminiscence, since Jenny had not worked since a fortnight before her wedding.

"It's all gone stale now," she explained. "Though David does his best to keep me current, I never was a theatre nurse, and so much changed during the war. Still, I do like to think back to my Clyde Summers days..."

Under other circumstances it would have been an enjoyable evening. The wine was a more than adequate vintage and the packet of cigarettes that had been set by Hilary's place were her favourite brand. The conversation was undemanding but pleasant. Yet it was strangely disorienting, seeming to open up a vista of amiable suburban post-war dinner parties, undoubtedly only too familiar to David and Jenny, that had formed no part of Hilary's recent life. Perhaps having dinner with one's husband's former lover was the done thing in the Home Counties nowadays.

Jenny disappeared into the kitchen to see about the coffee. Hilary watched her go, thinking that when viewed from behind her figure had its charms - although one was not at all sure whether David's tastes ran in that direction. After Jenny had gone, Hilary continued to gaze towards the half-closed door, hoping that David would take the message and not expect her to carry on the conversation. He got to his feet and went over to the open window, smoking idly. Outside, the boughs of a large hydrangea hung fire, weighted down with bloom, lit by the last of the sunlight.

Thankfully David said nothing, not even passing a commonplace about the beauty of the evening.

Hilary wondered how much he had told his wife. About the cause of their renewed acquaintance, certainly not - and for this she was distinctly grateful. About their prior relationship, who could know? At the time Hilary had assumed that everyone in hospital had been aware, but the Clyde Summers was a vast and august institution; it was perfectly possible that Jenny Anderson, in orthopaedics, could have remained untroubled by the gossip. Whether David - or another - had chosen to tell her afterwards was a different question.

Jenny came through again with a tray. She distributed three cups of coffee and returned with plates and a small summer pudding.

"All the fruit is from our garden," she said, serving out. "I'm so glad to be living somewhere with a bit of space. But then you're from Gloucestershire, aren't you? This must seem very suburban by your standards."

Hilary looked out through the French doors, past the hydrangea, at a very respectably laid out back garden, perhaps over half an acre in size. The kitchen garden at Larch Hill was a good bit larger, and there were 900 acres of Fleming land beyond that - but this was, she felt, beside the point. So was the fact that she would never, as long as she lived, consider herself a native of Gloucestershire.

"Not at all," she said. "It's lovely."

For a while they lost themselves in the pudding. Hilary took a small second helping, exclaiming over the perfection of the fruit, for this seemed simpler than thinking up another topic of conversation.

It came as a welcome interruption when a small mite, even smaller than Ossie, with a halo of blonde curls, put her head around the door.

"Mummy," she said without preamble, "Timothy's wet the bed again."

Jenny disappeared, with apologies, immediately. Hilary looked at the bottom of her empty coffee cup and lit another cigarette.

"I never thought of you as the sort who would want a large family," she said.

David looked amused. "Ossie was conceived in a store cupboard on orthopaedics - of course you'll see that Jenny couldn't just stroll onto the residents' wing for a visit. He wasn't planned. Could have been rather a blow to the reputation. But I was just about to take my Fellowship and it seemed the right time to settle down and become a respectable married man. So I did. After that the genie was out of the bottle, as it were. Nina was born a year after Ossie. Timothy is two years younger. Ellen is the baby. Now one begins to think we're on the verge of too much of a good thing - you did notice that she's pregnant again...?"

"Yes. I guessed."

"But it keeps Jenny occupied," he continued. "So we've let nature take its course thus far. She was one of six, herself, and rather liked it."

"I was one of seven."

"I know," said David. "The youngest."

He had never met a single member of Hilary's family, except for Sam, once, accidentally, at the Randolph. There was a long silence.

"She's twelve weeks along," he added. "You would have been about the same, wouldn't you?"

Hilary gave him a straight look. "David, my dear, your bedside manner is still appalling."

"The similarity of timing occurred when you first came in to see me. We'd just found out. I wouldn't have mentioned it then, under the circumstances; I'm not quite as callous as you think me. But you've been so sensible about it."

 _One can hardly say 'thank you' to that,_ thought Hilary.

"Does she know what you do?" she asked.

David had been about to raise his cup of coffee to his lips. Now he lowered it slowly, along with his voice. "No, as it happens." He paused. "Shall we go for a walk in the garden? Jenny will come and find us when she gets back."

Leaving their empty dishes behind, they got to their feet and did so. _Down the garden path,_ thought Hilary wryly.

"I thought it best not to involve her," David continued once they were safely out of earshot. "She's never done my books; she's never asked to look at them. No man's wife ever complained about him earning more than he ought. Certainly mine doesn't - quite the opposite."

"Julian hasn't a head for finance either."

It was an understatement and, she also felt, a small betrayal. As a matter of principle she had tried to avoid bringing Julian into their conversations, and mostly had succeeded. Up until now. 

David nodded sagely. "It has its points of convenience."

This was not what she had meant but it seemed too much of an effort to correct him.

"Have you given any more thought to my proposal?" he asked.

"Which one?"

He ignored this, as it deserved. "Once you've agreed in principle, we can sit down and go over the details. I've a good practice; you've seen for yourself. I'm prepared to negotiate regarding remuneration. You'd be back at the heart of medicine, which is where you've wanted to be all this time, isn't it?"

What could one say? _No,_ most obviously and most rationally. _No, David, thank you, but it's impossible._

Which she had said, though it seemed to have done little good.

"It wouldn't mean anything without a training place," she replied. "I've only the MRCS, as I have to keep reminding you. Right now I've my own practice, and one week in three on call at the local hospital. With you I'd be an assistant forever, spending my days talking to private patients about their hernias. You can't just wave your hand and..."

"It's not so difficult," he said, as if she had merely suggested rearranging his theatre list for the coming week. "I'm an honorary at Bethnal Green as well as Guy's, more fool me; my senior partner is on the board there. Since we spoke in Greenwich I've sounded him out. It will take some delicacy but that's hardly an obstacle. We could bring you on in August, with the new crop of housemen. Surgical registrar, obviously, though I suppose you'd need a bit of handholding at first. On my firm."

Hilary was half speechless. "Tell me what you expect to get out of it."

"Don't you think that's rather selling yourself short?"

"No. You should be able to do that much for me, at least."

"There's my sideline," he said finally. "I shan't have to fill you in; you know already what it involves. I won't deny that's a certain advantage. One can't go broadcasting it too widely. And you would be surprised how many otherwise sensible people, who cheerfully break most of the ten commandments on an average week, suddenly become precious about moral scruples when the topic is broached."

If he had made such a suggestion to her a year ago, Hilary would have reacted with immediate horror and indignation. How dare he ask her to break the law and her Hippocratic oath, risk being struck off the register and sent to prison, all for his own personal convenience? But this, of course, was exactly what she had asked David to do for her. What he had done for her.

"Because I'm implicated already, you mean," she said flatly.

"If you will."

They had reached the bottom of the garden now. There was a bench by the stone wall that marked its end: a small bench, just wide enough for two. David sat down here, hitching up his trousers matter-of-factly, and Hilary followed suit. She wondered how it would look to Jenny, if Jenny thought to search for them here, but then perhaps a minor scene was all the evening needed. It would be worth it if it helped to forestall a major scene later. For one mad moment Hilary wondered whether she ought to kiss him.

"You mustn't think me mercenary," David resumed. "I won't deny it's an inducement - there has to be something to make up for the risk - but it _is_ something I've believed in for rather a long time. You'll remember. I don't see that there's any rational approach other than legalisation; I assume you agree."

Hilary nearly stuck at this. "Yes," she said cautiously, "in principle. Except that one knows how it would be abused..."

"Indeed. Married women in reasonable health, possessed of every possible economic advantage, whose only justification is that a baby would interfere with their enjoyment of life..."

"Damn you," said Hilary quietly. "You bastard. You haven't changed."

"My place is not to judge," said David with a note of self-congratulation.

It brought to mind, inescapably, the argument during their training days. Although lacking any personal applicability, it had gained urgency from the energy and confidence of youth. They had wound up shouting, and then, soon afterwards, making love - though the expression hardly did it justice. The reality had been a good bit coarser. And more satisfying.

Hilary glanced down at David's broad thigh, clad in crisply pressed and tailored wool. Beside it her own knee, bare below the hem of her skirt, for nylons were still impossible. She could not help but imagine... but this was ridiculous, she thought crossly. Of course she could help it.

The sound of gravel crunching under court shoes came a moment before Jenny emerged through the bushes.

"There you are," she said, faintly out of breath. "I've been over the whole garden, why did you come all the way down here? Changing wet sheets, I should never say I miss nursing."

David got to his feet with a smile that Hilary considered slightly patronising, but Jenny did not seem to notice. "Hullo, poppet. We were just discussing bringing Hilary aboard at Bethnal Green. She's sticking at the practicalities. I thought a change of scene might be indicated."

"You don't want to work for my husband, he's an awful slavedriver."

Jenny's voice had all of the smugness of assured possession. Hilary supposed that to Jenny she - neither beautiful nor young, childless, with her husband far away, the one who had lost out - hardly seemed a threat. But even so she revised downwards her estimate of Jenny's intelligence.

"Indeed I don't," she said, getting to her feet too. "Though it's been very interesting to hear about it. Thank you for a lovely dinner. I think I ought to be going now."

This they resisted with the usual courtesy but they did not press too far. The evening had clearly come to an end. Hilary imagined them quietly agreeing, once she had gone, that it had been pleasant enough to see her again but that it would probably be best not to invite her back.

David said that he would see Hilary to her car, and did so. This was the eastern side of the house, already plunged into shadow by the setting sun. Only the highest treetops remained tipped with light; by contrast, the moss on their trunks and in between the paving stones of the walk seemed a very deep green. Hilary shivered involuntarily, wishing that she had not left her cardigan in the back of the car. There was no point in fetching it out now. It would only prolong the leave-taking.

"You'll have a long drive back," said David, though he did not usually make a habit of stating the obvious.

"Yes, but it's not so bad. I shall be back by midnight, and six hours of sleep ought to be more than enough for anyone."

She spoke briskly and lightly, as they had always done in hospital, but the note seemed false when set against the hush of a summer's evening.

David was studying her expectantly. "Well?"

"Jenny trusts you," replied Hilary. She unlocked the car and then found herself lingering with her hand on the open door.

"I told you, I don't make a habit of this sort of thing."

"Why now, then?"

"Why not now?"

No clear answer to this was possible, since one could obviously not cite the decalogue. So she said nothing, only looked steadily into his hazel eyes.

He rested his hand on hers, warm against her chilled skin. Hilary, shocked, nearly pulled away before realising that his body screened the view from the house. One could sense the effortless precision in his touch. He did just what he intended to; no more and no less.

"It'll keep," said David. "It's kept this long. But the post won't. You understand that."

"Yes." This was sensible, after all, two people discussing a job to be done. "I won't make you wait."

She drove away with a scatter of gravel, tapping her fingers restlessly on the wheel as if by doing so she could somehow dislodge the lingering feeling of his touch.

 _It confuses everything,_ she thought. _Once upon a time he never would have done that._

So wrapped up was she in this small resentment that it was only once she had turned onto the main road that she realised she had spoken to David as if there were some chance she might accept him. 

There was almost no traffic at this time of night. Just past lighting-up time. From the other direction came a rider on a motorbike, almost invisible in the gloom. He lifted his hand to her as they passed and she turned on her own headlamps, belatedly, with exaggerated care. The chance encounter made her think of T. E. Lawrence, whom Sanderson, her old chief, had been called to treat after his crash. Unsuccessfully, of course. That had been a year or two before her time. This rider was not wearing a helmet either.

All of this was no help for it brought her inevitably back to the question of her career, and David.

_But what question is there? I haven't a career, not as I would have understood it once. My father was right; and I've accepted it, or I thought I had. Would I really give up my practice, risk my marriage and his, sell my soul, all for the most tenuous chance of becoming a surgeon again?_

Perhaps it was the hour of the day, that liminal moment between evening and night, that brought her a sudden, unwelcome clarity. The answer, realised Hilary, had been the same all along. Her evasions and denials and delays had changed it not one whit.

 _Yes,_ she thought. _Yes. I would. Yes._

**Author's Note:**

> It was of course Hugh Cairns who treated T. E. Lawrence, before becoming a renowned neurosurgeon at the John Radcliffe in Oxford, where Mary Renault was a nurse. But then we know that the 'Clyde Summers' is really the John Radcliffe, don't we?


End file.
